


Five Women Who Changed Their Hair

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2011-10-10
Packaged: 2017-10-24 12:01:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/263259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hair means a lot of different things to different girls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Women Who Changed Their Hair

1\. to grieve

The ends of Pansy's hair were sticky with congealed blood. She tried charming it off, but that just seemed to make her hair drier. Charms always was Pansy's worst subject.

She scrubbed futilely at her neck wound. "You're going to be the worst Healer ever, Greengrass," she snapped at Daphne. "It itches now."

Like the idiot she was, Pansy had looked among her classmates at Hogsmeade and, upon realizing Draco had disappeared, went tearing back into the stupid castle with Greengrass and Millicent Bulstrode at her heels, looking for him.

It had been an impossible task. Hogwarts was a mess of chaos, and Draco nowhere in sight. Pansy had actually started crying before Daphne grabbed her and Millicent and dragged them back downstairs, where, in Hogsmeade, she'd Apparated them both to her home.

Or tried to.

Millicent had been Splinched so badly that Pansy and Daphne had both screamed and run away, their uniforms ruined by her blood. Millie had apparently clawed at Pansy's neck before being torn limb from limb by Daphne's panicked magic.

Now, standing in Daphne's bathroom, staring at her shell-shocked reflection in the mirror, Pansy lifted a pair of scissors and began to saw away at her hair.

Daphne shook her head disapprovingly behind her, but Pansy ignored her easily. When she was done, Pansy's hair only reached to her ears.

"I don't like it," Daphne said flatly.

"You don't have to," Pansy snapped.

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2\. to grow up

The only reason Ginny hadn't cut her hair when she was ten was because her mother loved it. The first manfestation of Ginny's magic had been her waking up one morning with hair exactly like Ron's. Her mum had shrieked like a banshee and gone on about how she had ruined her beautiful, beautiful long hair. Ginny felt so bad by the end of it that the next day her hair had gone back to normal.

It wasn't that Ginny didn't like her hair, she liked it fine. It was just that long hair was awfully inconvenient for getting into mud fights with Fred and George and Ron, and sometimes her brothers pulled on it, and sometimes it got stuck on chairs which hurt a lot, and it got in her face when she was flying.

When Ginny was eleven, she found a use for long hair: hiding. When she was eleven, she had plenty of people to hide from.

She was still hiding when she was twelve, but from embarrassment rather than fear. Watching Harry Potter face the dementors, Ginny wanted to be brave too.

All the prettiest witches had long hair, Ginny decided when she was thirteen. She wanted to be pretty, so she kept her hair long. Michael Corner liked it, and he was nice and understanding, like a not-evil version of Tom Riddle.

When she was fourteen, Ginny finally got onto the Gryffindor Quidditch team, and suddenly her hair became a problem again. She braided it, but she didn't much like the way that looked.

When Ginny was fifteen, Harry Potter wanted to be with her, and she was so afraid she was dreaming that she didn't dare change a thing. Even if her hair still bothered her when she flew.

When Ginny joins the Holyhead Harpies, she will slowly pick up her wand, shuffle it from hand to hand, and finally cast that shortening spell.

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3\. to stand out

Most people forget that Narcissa was born a brunette.

Most people forget, because most people forgot about Narcissa then. Bellatrix and Andromeda were brunettes, and when they were in the room together, there was no room for Narcissa.

She set almost a family record for longest Sorting, if the Blacks had kept track of that sort of thing. The hat was intrigued by the possibility of Hufflepuff for her, but Narcissa, terrified, had shut it down. Eventually, the hat had to admit that she fit the Slytherin profile better than Bellatrix. She would have thrown that in Bella's face, if Bella believed her.

Narcissa started tinting her hair the second semester of her first year at Hogwarts. Despite Bella's hexes, she had still heard remarks about Cissy the Sissy who hid behind Andromeda's skirts.

It was light red when Lucius Malfoy dumped pumpkin juice on it in the Great Hall.

Narcissa burst into tears.

She vaguely registered a Gryffindor prefect telling off a surprised Malfoy as she ran out of the Great Hall.

Alone in the dormitory, she was able to dry her hair before furiously charming it until it went peachy.

(Malfoy would spend the rest of the year trying to apologize-- with the help of an outraged Andromeda, Narcissa successfully ignored him for another year and a half)

Bella didn't like her new hair color. She claimed it made Narcissa look "pasty and peaky". Dromeda was wonderfully sensitive and polite about it, but Narcissa could tell she didn't quite understand.

Later, when she no longer shared a bedroom with Andromeda, when Bellatrix was married and had someone else to complain about, Lucius Malfoy told her that he had only dumped the pumpkin juice because he was embarrassed that his friends had caught him staring at her, and that he thought her new hair was the prettiest in school.

She doesn't quite believe him, but she keeps her hair blonde.

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4\. to change

Lavender hated the way her hair curled. She wished her hair was straight and manageable, like Parvati's.

She was glad to be dorming with Hermione Granger, whose hair made hers look glamorous by comparison. Until that one horrible night in fourth year, where Lavender had grudgingly agreed to go with Seamus Finnegan while Parvati had gotten to be the center of attention on Harry's arm and stupid Hermione Granger had come in with her hair all sleek and fixed with Viktor Krum.

Hermione, who was too snotty to talk to Lavender half of the time with her nose in a book. Hermione, who Lavender really started to hate in sixth year when she was going out with Ron Weasley and the only way she could shut him up about Hermione was to snog him senseless (admittedly not a bad compromise but it was a little lonely sometimes).

Hermione, who saved her life in seventh year.

After the battle, Lavender makes a note to ask Hermione how she fixed her hair at the Yule Ball. Ron said once that Hermione had only did it the once because she thought it was too much trouble, but Lavender thinks it will probably be worth it.

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5\. for love

Ninety-six.

Ninety-seven.

Ninety-eight.

Ninety-nine.

One hundred.

Bellatrix set down the hairbrush by her mirror and smiled.

She liked to think of herself as the first and best Black sister. Andromeda and Narcissa were her pale imitations. Visitors to their home always came away with the strongest impression of Bella. Bella for beautiful. Bellatrix for warrior.

Her mother liked to say that the one quality Bella lacked was patience. Bellatrix herself disagreed. She didn't have time for stupid and pointless things-- that didn't make her impatient. An impatient girl wouldn't brush her hair one hundred times each morning and night.

Why, Andromeda hardly brushed her hair at all. She managed to come out looking all right, but Bellatrix was certain that Andromeda would leave Hogwarts the worse for wear with all that hunching over books and studying. And little Narcissa all but shrunk into nothing whenever the opposite sex was around. This was all for the good: It was only right that Bellatrix get first choice of husbands among their rather sadly limited choices.

He would, of course, be completely subservient to her whims, and worship her blindly. Bella was considering using a love potion on the most attractive candidate. Unfortunately her potions had a nasty habit of exploding or crusting over when they weren't supposed to, so she would have to rely on someone else. She had approached the subject casually to Dromeda, who got consistent Es, but her younger sister seemed to be under the strange impression that Amortentia was immoral. Too bad-- without it, Andromeda would likely be the next spinster teacher at Hogwarts.

(In Bellatrix's case, several Slytherin boys were already at her beck and call. A firstie had already almost stammered out a proposal to her on sight. One of the Lestrange boys (she really couldn't tell them apart nine times out of ten) had hexed him before he could finish. )

Four years later, Andromeda is blasted off the family tree. Bellatrix didn't even realize how long she'd gone without seeing her shadow. She stares in the mirror and sees Andromeda's features mocking her. She throws the hairbrush at her reflection, and it cracks.

She didn't realize because she was with Mr Riddle, drawn by something beyond words or faces. There are traces of great handsomeness on Mr Riddle still, but he is more than appearances. Bellatrix is so eager to please this enigma that she forgets to bathe for two weeks. Rodolphus complains. She hexes him. Bellatrix will bathe when the Dark Lord tells her to bathe.

Narcissa worries that Bella has become obsessed. Cissy is engaged, so Bellatrix can't accuse her of jealousy. But she knows that Cissy is wrong, she's just nineteen, what does she know? Her own fiancé serves the Dark Lord now, recruited by Bellatrix. Narcissa was not happy when she found out-- something about dragging Lucius into a mad terrorist campaign.

Too bad. Cissy made the mistake of getting engaged to a man who could think for himself. A little too clever, that Lucius Malfoy-- Bellatrix works so hard to keep herself above him that on Narcissa's wedding day, for the first time in their lives, everyone says Narcissa is more beautiful.

The Dark Lord is the only person who ever valued Bellatrix for her passion first and her beauty second. She worships him for it.

Too late Bella remembers Narcissa's fears, the night the Dark Lord falls. She had wanted to come with him and take out the mudblood herself, but he had told her to stay back, promised her the Longbottoms tomorrow. Bellatrix doesn't know how she can live with the Dark Lord gone. With her purpose gone, all she has left is her beauty, and now that's starting to go, too.

In Azkaban, she doesn't even quite remember what she did to the Longbottoms. Maybe it was a happy memory. Maybe Bella's gone, maybe she's going. Maybe she forgot to go at all.

All she has in that cell is her hair, and every night she dreams it's falling off.


End file.
